Mr. Mellaire raised the theory that they were Finns of some sort, but this was indignantly denied by our big-footed youth of a carpenter, who swears he is a Finn himself. Louis, the cook, avers that somewhere over the world, on some forgotten voyage, he has encountered men of their type; but he can neither remember the voyage nor their race. He and the rest of the Asiatics accept their presence as a matter of course; but the crew, with the exception of Andy Fay and Mulligan Jacobs, is very superstitious about the new-comers, and will have nothing to do with them. “No good will come of them, sir,” Tom Spink, at the wheel, told us, shaking his head forebodingly. Margaret’s mittened hand rested on my arm as we balanced to the easy roll of the ship. We had paused from our promenade, which we now take each day, religiously, as a constitutional, between eleven and twelve. “Why, what is the matter with them?” she queried, nudging me privily in warning of what was coming. “Because they ain’t men, Miss, as we can rightly call men. They ain’t regular men.” “It was a bit irregular, their manner of coming on board,” she gurgled. “That’s just it, Miss,” Tom Spink exclaimed, brightening perceptibly at the hint of understanding. “Where’d they come from? They won’t tell. Of course they won’t tell. They ain’t men. They’re spirits—ghosts of sailors that drowned as long ago as when that cask went adrift from a sinkin’ ship, an’ that’s years an’ years, Miss, as anybody can see, lookin’ at the size of the barnacles on it.” “Do you think so?” Margaret queried. “We all think so, Miss. We ain’t spent our lives on the sea for nothin’. There’s no end of landsmen don’t believe in the Flyin’ Dutchman. But what do they know? They’re just landsmen, ain’t they? They ain’t never had their leg grabbed by a ghost, such as I had, on the _Kathleen_, thirty-five years ago, down in the hole ’tween the water-casks. An’ didn’t that ghost rip the shoe right off of me? An’ didn’t I fall through the hatch two days later an’ break my shoulder?” “Now, Miss, I seen ’em makin’ signs to Mr. Pike that we’d run into their ship hove to on the other tack. Don’t you believe it. There wasn’t no ship.” “But how do you explain the carrying away of our head-gear?” I demanded. “There’s lots of things can’t be explained, sir,” was Tom Spink’s answer. “Who can explain the way the Finns plays tom-fool tricks with the weather? Yet everybody knows it. Why are we havin’ a hard passage around the Horn, sir? I ask you that. Why, sir?” I shook my head. “Because of the carpenter, sir. We’ve found out he’s a Finn. Why did he keep it quiet all the way down from Baltimore?” “Why did he tell it?” Margaret challenged. “He didn’t tell it, Miss—leastways, not until after them three others boarded us. I got my suspicions he knows more about ’m than he’s lettin’ on. An’ look at the weather an’ the delay we’re gettin’. An’ don’t everybody know the Finns is regular warlocks an’ weather-breeders?”